In a few short weeks, on January 21st, people will gather for Women’s Marches in cities across the country showing their advocacy, their fortitude and their strength – just like Mary Beth Tinker did in 1965.

In 1945 when singer and pianist Nina Simone was just 12 years old, her parents tried to sit up front to see her piano recital. They were moved to the back to make room for white guests. Simone refused to play until her parents were moved back up front and her lifelong involvement with civil rights was born.

It takes courage and fortitude to advocate for your values whether you’re 12, 32, 62 or 102. Advocating for your values is not for the faint of heart. You will lose friends. You will be called names. You will be ridiculed. You may be threatened.

Having the courage to stop the show insures the music you value will play on for a lifetime and beyond.

Let your perfectly, perfect voice sing your beautiful song because no one can sing it like you can!

Ooh Baby, Baby, you’ve got to jump out of your safe zone and take the floor when it’s your turn to dance.

Especially when the floor is radiating with those standing up for women and families including:

Cecile Richards, tireless advocate and president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Dr Willie J Parker, reproductive justice advocate and the physician plaintiff in the federal lawsuit preventing the closure of Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, a case currently in

With Dr Parker

request for hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court

Salt-N-Pepa the female hip-hop duo who use their art and their voices to deliver messages of safe sex, independence and respecting yourself as a woman

When it’s your turn, “shake your thang” and let your light shine. Your perfectly, perfect self is needed on the dance floor of advocacy and change on behalf of women, young people and families across the globe.

My husband and I worked on a project several years ago for a non-profit. Creating refrigerator magnets with the words Love, Care, Serve was one way the project took shape. In order to save a few dollars, an inexpensive magnet backing was selected for the trio of magnets.

“Care” trashed

Earlier this week I walked into our kitchen to discover that “Care” had succumbed the same fate as the “Love” magnet had several months ago – the less expensive magnetic material had lost its efficacy, no longer sticking to the refrigerator. Unceremoniously into the trash went “Care” to eventually join “Love” at the landfill.

Yet the intention for the project was to keep all three magnets – Love, Care, Serve – front and center as an ongoing reminder of the non-profit. A reminder of encouragement as well as a reminder to support the organization with time and money.

Magnetic efficacy #fail

If you want your project to “Serve” for the long haul with all of its components in place, you’ll need to ascertain just how committed you are. Are you willing to invest the time, energy and resources to make your project have magnetic efficacy, to have your project stick?

Are you willing to invest time, energy and resources into the people who will make your project thrive?

Are you willing to stay the course once the attorneys get involved with their “devil’s advocate” scenario building? Or, will the “devil’s advocate” suppositions compel you to abandon the project, and the people who have invested their love and care in the project? Will you go so far as to abandon your own values and fortitude for the project once legal-ease is spoken?